


I Was Just Learning How To Love

by OraRiposo



Category: Supernatural, destiel - Fandom
Genre: Destiel - Freeform, Gen, Supernatural - Freeform, a great big world, castiel - Freeform, say something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 11:35:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OraRiposo/pseuds/OraRiposo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Dean had taken on the challenges instead of Sam? And what if Sam hadn't been there to stop Dean from injecting that last syringe into Crowley's neck...?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Was Just Learning How To Love

The heart monitors pulsed dully in the brightly lit room. Beep...Beep...Beep...Each handful of heart beats was proceeded by the heavy pumping of the machine off to the side of the bed. Whoosh...Whoosh....These sounds lent to the cacophony in the room as yet another patient fell victim to the touch of Death's proxies. 

"Not you." The celestial being sat quietly in the seemingly vacant chair beside the bed. He held nothing in his hands, hummed no tunes, and kept his eyes averted from the television mounted on the ceiling intended for visitors. He wore a filthy trench coat, torn and ripped at the hem and sleeves. His once-white dress shirt was rumpled and stained with blood and worse. His tie was shredded halfway up, ripped away by some fierce creature or another. "They won't have you," he murmured.

In the bed beside the ragged man lay another. Human in nature, but not in soul. His trials were done and over, his life spent in the pursuit of freedom from oppression. A thick tube from one of the machines gave him air, and an I.V drip kept him fed and watered. The tremendous wounds on the surface of his broken body had long since healed, yet still he did not wake.  
"Castiel," a voice whispered. 

The angel raised his head and looked to the foot of the bed. There stood a pretty young woman wearing a business suit that gave her a very reserved appearance. 

"No," Castiel repeated for probably the hundredth time. "You can't have him."

The woman looked over her shoulder at the bed two to the right of them where nurses stepped back. One of the doctors pronounced the man dead. "How much longer are you going to keep this up, Castiel?" she asked tiredly.

"Until he wakes up," Castiel answered, his own voice as weary as hers. 

Stepping around the foot of the bed, the woman knelt in front of Castiel and took his hands. "I know how hard this is for you," she said somberly. "Losing a loved one is never easy. Especially when it's a Winchester...but you have to let him go, Castiel. He won't ever wake up."

Castiel pulled his hands gently out of the woman's. It wasn't her fault...he had no right to be angry with her. She was only doing her job. 

"I can't give up on him," he protested weakly. "I won't."

He felt the woman's eyes on his face, and he couldn't bring himself to meet hers. She was right...he had known that from the minute she first came to claim her quarry. 

"What would Sam say?" she asked meekly. "If he were here? What would he say about keeping his brother around like this? Not dead...not alive?"

"He would be furious." Castiel swallowed past the lump in his throat. Keeping him here in this limbo...it was worse than Purgatory. "I've tried, Tessa. I have. I just...I can't let him go."

Tessa shook her head slowly, her short-cut hair floating around her pixy-like face. "It's not your choice, Castiel. It's Dean's."  
Castiel looked to Dean then, examining his body, his closed eyes that would never open again.

"Think, Castiel....what would Dean say if he knew you were keeping him here? Keeping him from his family?" 

The angel turned to look at Tessa, his mouth opening to deliver a harsh retort, but he found nothing in front of him. She'd vanished. Castiel closed his mouth and looked away as his eyes stung. The tears blurred his vision, and he wiped them away angrily. 

What right did Tessa have to tell him these things? What right did she have to make these decisions when he, who was closest to Dean after his brother died, couldn't make them himself?

"I don't know what you want me to do," Castiel rasped. He held his face in his hands and rocked in the chair. "I can't choose for you...." 

Reaching forward, Castiel took Dean's hand as he had every day for the last six months. He held Dean's hand tightly, desperate to feel him. What would Dean say? Castiel tried to imagine, but he realized he couldn't even remember the sound of Dean's voice. Try as he might, he couldn't remember the sound of his closest friend's voice.

"Say something," Castiel begged, shaking Dean's hand. "Please, say something!" Tears streaked his cheeks, and he closed his eyes, trying once again to enter Dean's mind. He found what he always had. 

Darkness. Complete and utter darkness. Even the light of his true form couldn't penetrate that total blackness. The black crept into the white of Castiel's wings, bled into the feathers and the tips of his fingers. He felt it like a consuming cold that sapped the warmth from his body, from his very core.

"No!" he cried as he pulled out of Dean's mind. He collapsed against the bed as his shoulders shook. "Come back to me," he sobbed into the blanket. "Don't go...."

"You used to be so strong, Castiel," Tessa murmured from where she stood beside Castiel. The angel didn't even protest when she rested her hand on his shoulder. "You have to make a decision," she soothed. "His body is dying."

Castiel's sobs filled the room, but none of the attendants heard. No one but Tessa heard the anguish in his voice when he gave his consent for the reaper to touch Dean's hand. No one but Castiel saw the pained expression come over Tessa's face when she pulled her hand back. When she looked down at her empty hand and curled her fingers around nothing.

"He's already gone," she said. "I don't know how long...."

The angel stood from his chair and leaned over Dean's hospital bed. He wiped the tears on his cheeks away as he started pulling tubes and sticky pads off of the withered body. Alarms screeched, and Castiel ignored them completely. Once Dean was free of the offending hospital equipment, Castiel pressed a kiss to the other's forehead and stepped back, losing himself in the crowd of nurses and doctors that swarmed around the already-dead man. 

"Time of death, 10:41 am."


End file.
